WiDS - Women in Data Science 2018

The single largest event on the data science community calendar is the one that highlights women in the field.

Global Women in Data Science (WiDS) is like the Women’s March for analytics. It’s a phenomenon too big for just one city.

The conference was founded by Margot Gerritsen, a Stanford faculty member and Director of Stanford's Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering (ICME). Stanford staff members Karen Matthys and Judy Logan are the even's Co-Directors.

WiDS’ attracts technical expert speakers from a full range of analytics specialties. All of them are women.

This year’s headliners include professionals from companies such as Microsoft, Facebook, Uber and Airbnb. Influential academics, among them Latanya Sweeney of Harvard, Daniella Witten of the University of Washington and Maria Klawe of Harvey Mudd College, are also on the agenda.

The anchor event happens March 5 at Stanford University, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Meanwhile, sister conferences expand the action to cities across the US and more than 50 countries. Livestream and Facebook Live open the conference to still more analytics aficionados.

Last year’s event drew 75,000 people worldwide. This year, they’re expecting 100,000. Global Women in Data Science is the largest analytics conference on Earth.

About one-third of the attendees are professionals from industry. Another third are academics. Also present are the students who are soon to be sought-after data science hires.